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England's training sessions for a warm, arid T20 World Cup in the subcontinent in the coming month brought them on Wednesday to a chilly, rainy New Zealand's largest city, where they were forced to conduct the last training session before their next match against the Kiwis indoors. It is not always obvious what role these two-team contests fulfill, what valuable insights could possibly be learned – but on this instance, for at least one of the players, that is no concern.

Tom Banton's Changed Position: Starting Batsman to Lower Down

The cricketer says he is “still learning now”, and if it is the type of statement often repeated even by athletes who have already reached the peak of their game, in his situation it is certainly accurate. After forging his reputation as a frontline hitter, mostly as an starting player, Banton now occupies a totally new role, batting at five or six. “There weren’t really too many discussions,” he said. “They simply brought me back into the team and informed me, ‘You’re going to bat in the middle order now.’”

Prior to returning in June, the vast majority of Banton’s over 160 senior T20 innings had been as an starting batsman, a further portion at third position and the rest – but for seven balls at seventh spot in a domestic T20 game previously – at fourth place. If England plan to retain him in this altered role he needs every possible opportunity to become accustomed to it, and he has already worked out a key point: “Playing down the order,” he concluded, “is a much tougher than opening.”

Mixed Results in New Zealand

Banton said that “there’s going to be times where it works well and it appears brilliant and other times where it fails”, and the initial matches of the winter in New Zealand have featured one of each. In the first, he lasted a few deliveries and scored a low score before getting out to the deep fielder; in the second, he played a dozen balls, scored 29, and finished unbeaten.

Thoughts on Return and Development

The current series has witnessed Banton come back to the country in which he made his international debut in November 2019. Since then, he drifted back out of the team, made a brief return in recently and then spent more than three years in the wilderness before returning for Harry Brook’s first T20 as England captain. “During the journey, it was weird,” he said. “It was six years ago when I made my debut. Seems a lot has happened in that time. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The few years after I got dropped from the national team was a difficult phase for me. I had a two- to three-year stretch where I was working myself out.”

Support from Team Management

And now, he has been given a fresh challenge to tackle. Banton is grateful to have been offered a return, and also for the coach's skill to make him comfortable while he works out how best to seize the opportunity. “The coach approached me before [the recent game] and said, ‘Go out and express yourself.’ It's reassuring to have that freedom,” Banton said. “I know it’s just a brief comment someone says, but it provides the backing that if it doesn't work, it’s not the end of the world. It’s something so small but for me it’s, ‘Alright, I’ve got the approval from the manager and I can go out and do it.’”

Shift in Location and Team Selection

Following the first two games of the contest at Christchurch’s Hagley Park, a venue with expansive playing area, the visitors finish the series on Thursday at Eden Park, a dual-purpose rugby and cricket ground where the field edge at 55m is among the most compact in the world. With uncertain weather and an unfamiliar venue they have abandoned their recent habit of announcing their lineup two days in advance while they work out if their ideal XI for this match will be the same as the side that started the earlier fixtures.

Upcoming Changes for One-Day Matches

Next, they move to Mount Maunganui and shift attention to one-day internationals, with a somewhat changed squad: Jordan Cox, Zak Crawley and Phil Salt are omitted, while four others come in. Most newcomers arrived in Auckland on the same day but the scheduling of the bowler's Ashes preparations means he will arrive later, flying with two fellow bowlers, two seamers who are also preparing for the Tests in the away series but are not in the white-ball squad. As a result he will be absent for the opening game at the venue, the stadium where he was racially abused on his only previous appearance, in a few years back.